Published on April 21, 2019.
Drawing on Masayuki Takayama’s book America and China Arrogantly Lie, this essay examines the background of Jiang Zemin’s remark that “Japan is the common enemy of America and China” through concrete episodes in modern history.
It discusses figures and events such as Wellington Koo, the May Fourth Movement, the Hongkew Park bombing, the Xi’an Incident, the Second Shanghai Incident, missionary reporting after the fall of Nanjing, and propaganda in LIFE magazine and Asia, arguing that U.S.-China coordination repeatedly worked in ways that isolated Japan.
The essay also cites the striking disparity in prewar American public sentiment toward China and Japan, and reflects on whether that climate of opinion helps explain how the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki became possible.

2019-04-21
As a result, before the last war, American favorability toward China was 76 percent, while toward Japan it was only 2 percent.
(Shunsuke Kamei, ed., Japan and America)

The following is a continuation of the previous chapter.
What follows too is from Masayuki Takayama’s latest book, and while his hard-edged integrity stands out even more, it is truly his vast knowledge of modern history that marks him as a real journalist.
In particular, the portions I highlighted in bold…
are a parade of facts that almost no Japanese know at all…
and, needless to say, the world knows nothing about them either.
The following is from America and China Arrogantly Lie.
Masayuki Takayama.
1,300 yen.
Tokuma Shoten.
First edition, February 28, 2015.
From pages 100 to 107.
The bold emphasis and the comments marked with an asterisk below are mine.
Jiang Zemin was right when he said, “Japan is the common enemy of America and China.”
When Jiang Zemin visited the United States as head of state, he deliberately stopped in Hawaii, laid flowers at the Pearl Harbor memorial, and made remarks to the effect that “Japan is the common enemy of America and China.”
Japan fought in order to chastise greedy and arrogant countries like China and Russia.
The United States was the same, greedy and at the same time posing as a righteous power.
Pearl Harbor was the opening of hostilities undertaken at the risk of national destiny in order to admonish that.
China, of all things, has no standing to push itself forward and deliver pompous lectures there.
There was also commentary saying, “No, Jiang Zemin is trying to drive Japan and the United States apart through the history issue and to bring China and the United States closer together.”
According to that view, China is trying to wedge itself by force between the close relationship of the United States and Japan.
It wants to push Japan down and become friendly with the United States itself.
If that were so, why is it that when undersea oil fields were found and China suddenly began saying, “The Senkakus are mine,” the United States said not a single word to rebuke such shamelessness?
The American press is also silent about the conduct of Chinese who hold anti-Japan demonstrations and indulge in arson and looting.
It is simply too strange.
But if one looks at history, it seems that Japan has merely assumed on its own that Japan and the United States are close, and that rather Jiang Zemin’s statement that “Japan is the common enemy of America and China” appears right in several respects.
Until just yesterday in the United States, Chinese coolies were made to work, and when they were no longer needed, they were disposed of like stray dogs.
But after the Russo-Japanese War, when the United States saw one Chinese student after another flowing into Japan, it hurriedly built Tsinghua and began recruiting students to study in America.
It welcomed the arriving Chinese students with manufactured smiles.
Then it drew them in and used them as pawns to drive Japan and China apart.
The first of these was Wellington Koo, that is, Gu Weijun.
He studied at Columbia University and, after the Xinhai Revolution, was sent back to China and became an adviser to Yuan Shikai.
At the peace conference after the First World War, he served as China’s representative, and the American representative Woodrow Wilson, unbelievably, arranged for him to be able to participate in the committee of ten composed of the five great powers.
At the conference, Gu Weijun responded to Wilson’s expectations by relentlessly criticizing Japan’s leasehold in Shandong.
Although it came to light that the Chinese government had already recognized Japan’s lease and had even received advance payment, causing this first U.S.-China attempt to crush Japan to end in failure, Gu Weijun’s activities also resonated in China itself, and the May Fourth Movement broke out.
It is said that behind this there was maneuvering by the American minister Paul Reinsch, but in any case the estrangement between Japan and China became decisive from that point on.
After that, every important incident involved the United States.
After the First Shanghai Incident, the Hongkew Park bombing, in which Prince Kitashirakawa and others were assassinated, was carried out by the Korean terrorist Yun Bong-gil under the guidance of the American missionary George Fitch.
Even in the Xi’an Incident, which became the trigger for Chiang Kai-shek’s turn toward anti-Japanism, the shadow of the United States can be seen.
At that time, the man who entered Xi’an accompanied by Soong Mei-ling was William Donald, a reporter for the New York Herald, who was close to Chiang and also served as an adviser to Zhang Xueliang.
In the following year’s Second Shanghai Incident, Chennault openly commanded Chinese air units.
In the capture of Nanjing that followed, the American missionaries Bates and Magee spoke of “a great massacre by the Japanese army,” and the New York Times and the Chicago Daily News reported it.
All of them were Americans.
Henry Luce’s LIFE magazine and the magazine Asia, edited by Pearl Buck, reported it in even more lurid fashion.
Both were children of American missionaries sent to China, and they continued to portray the Chinese in the most favorable possible light.
As a result, before the last war, American favorability toward China was 76 percent, while toward Japan it was only 2 percent (Shunsuke Kamei, ed., Japan and America).
When I read this passage, I finally understood.
Why was the United States able to commit such an act as dropping atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki?
To be continued.